The Good Apprentice

By: Iris Murdoch

Narrated by: Christopher Cazenove

Edward Baltram is overwhelmed with guilt. His nasty little prank has gone horribly wrong: He fed his closest friend a sandwich laced with a hallucinogenic drug, and the young man fell out of a window to his death. Edward's guilt and depression are worsened by daily letters from the young man's mother cursing Edward as a murderer. Tortured, Edward searches for redemption through a reunion with his famous father, the reclusive painter Jesse Baltram.

©2003 Iris Murdoch (P)2003 Phoenix Books, Inc.

Critic reviews

"[T]he reader's involvement with the huge cast never diminishes, nor does attention to their wit and philosophical exchanges flag.” (Publishers Weekly)

"Iris Murdoch at her most artful, juggling philosophy and farce with knowledge and ease." (Economist)

"Murdoch works with an intellectual daring most writers only dream of." (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Brilliant!

I loved this book- her characters and their minds and feelings - all are fascinating and make for compelling listening.
The narration is the best I have ever heard. Christopher Cazenove is utterly brilliant - what a great loss to us all that he died so young.

Tiresome and plotless, but beautifully written

Any additional comments?

I adore Iris Murdoch's writing, but after listening to and loving the Philosopher's Pupil, I listened to this book, and it seemed to drag on endlessly with tiresome characters who were endlessly and pointlessly navel-gazing, with next to nothing really going on. Still, I listened to the entire book, with hopes the whole time that it would pick up, but it never did. However, her prose is so delectable, I continued to listen, hope and grumble, and couldn't bear to not listen.

A Squabble of Smartypants

Aging Artists and Models, Intellectuals, adulterers, and their children, make for an interesting series of critical and complicated situations. Read brilliantly by Christopher Cazenove, 'The Good Apprentice' follows a tragic death's trail through a wonderful group of characters playing at life in their search for meaning. Fun, serious and sometimes just strange, it is a story that surprises throughout and ends as it should.

A very entertaining book

This is a brilliant, psychological treatment of personal problems, arising from situations, that normal people can control but people with immature emotions find difficult. There’s a clear distinction between how normal people react to personal problems compared to how abnormal people behave. A great book that puts personal problems and family issues into perspective.

Perhaps as hard to read as it was to write ....

I did read (listen to) it all. I'm not entirely sure why, but it held a puzzling fascination for me. If you are interested in the interior workings of a mind losing it, this novel is instructive. ...a bit threatening to the reader's self in spots, as in a 'Crime and Punishment' or Edgar Allen Poe manner. The side story, which might have been the main story, was a rather artificial fantasy plopped into an otherwise straightforward and interesting novel. Requires mental juggling.